| Summary/Abstract |
In his November 2018 article, “The Salafi Worldview and the Hermeneutical Limits of Mainstream Sunni Critique of Salafi-Jihadism” in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism,1 Adis Duderija argues that “mainstream Sunnism” shares “the Salafi worldview” as well as certain “epistemological, hermeneutical, interpretational and methodological mechanisms” and “modes of reasoning” in common with the ideology of the “Islamic State” (IS)2 as presented in the group’s magazine Dabiq. (I will refer to this argument as Thesis 1.) For the author, the consequence of those theological “affinities” and similarities between mainstream traditionalist Sunnism and the IS religious ideologies is that the former is incapable of invalidating, countering, rebutting the latter (of rendering the beliefs and violent and harmful practices of Salafi-jihadist groups like the IS “hermeneutically unreasonable”) on matters such as enslavement of female captives, apostasy, or terrorist violence, because both religious cultures (mainstream Sunnism and IS ideology) share too much in common.
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